CHAPPAQUA, N.Y. - Angry, exasperated, and emotional, Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday firmly denied allegations from a forthcoming book that she used an anti-Semitic slur 26 years ago.
''I wanted to unequivocally state it never happened,'' the first lady said after taking the unusual step of inviting reporters to the garden of her Westchester County home for a hastily scheduled news conference to discuss the controversy.
In the book - ''State of a Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton'' - author Jerry Oppenheimer, a former reporter for the National Enquirer, quotes Paul Fray, who worked for Bill Clinton's unsuccessful congressional campaign in Arkansas in 1974, saying that Mrs. Clinton used the slur toward him after Bill Clinton lost the election.
Fray's wife said she witnessed the incident, and a third person, Neil McDonald, claimed to have heard the obscenity as he stood outside the room.
Previous biographies of the Clintons have also said there was an argument between Fray and Mrs. Clinton, but none of those books mentioned any slur.
Yesterday, the Clinton Senate campaign released copies of a handwritten letter from Fray to Mrs. Clinton, dated July 1, 1997, in which he states: ''I have wronged you. I ask for your forgiveness because I did say things against you, and called you names, not only to your face - but behind your back ... names that are unmentionable.''
Fray adds: ''At one time in my life, I would say things without thinking, without factual foundation ... I beg your forgiveness.''
Clinton said she was releasing the letter to show that ''there's a history of these kinds of charges coming from the people in question. They've been false in the past. They're false now.''
The Clinton campaign also released a statement from President Clinton in which he said: ''I was there on election night in 1974 and this charge is simply not true. It did not happen. My wife has stood for social justice and tolerance and against racial and religious hatred and bigotry for as long as I have known her. It's unfortunate that people would try to exploit false charges like this in an election rather than look at what she has done for her entire life.''
Mrs. Clinton characterized the controversy as ''a continuation of the politics of personal destruction.''
Before her news conference, the allegation had been reported over the weekend in the New York Post and the New York Daily News. The book is due out this week.
Mrs. Clinton indicated that her advisers had debated the best way to respond, saying: ''We had a lot of difficult conversations about it, because my policy for the last eight years has largely been just to absorb whatever insult, whatever charge, whatever accusation anybody says, and not respond because they are so outrageous and so unfair.''
Moments later, Mrs. Clinton appeared to be near tears. ''I'm very angry,'' she said.
US Representative Nita M. Lowey, a Democrat from New York, who is Jewish, stood with Clinton at the news conference and told reporters ''there's no way Hillary could make a statement like that.''
This was only the third time reporters have been invited on the Clinton property since she moved there in January.
Mrs. Clinton's Republican opponent in the New York Senate race, US Representative Rick Lazio, was repeatedly asked by reporters to speak about the controversy during two public appearances yesterday.
''I think it's best if I don't comment on it,'' he told reporters in upstate Norwich.
